My wife had another business trip to attend and she wouldn’t go if the baby couldn’t come with. However this time we couldn’t drive down as we did with her business trip to Chicago. We had to take baby on the plane down to Georgia!

My wife booked our travel through her work and since she was able to take a guest (me) my flight was paid for. We decided to take the baby with us as a lap child since he’s around 15lbs and a really good, happy baby. Since we were flying Southwest on a direct flight Milwaukee to Atlanta we made sure to bring babies birth certificate to verify he is indeed under 2 years old. My wife and I shared our largest luggage bag which we checked and baby had the entire carryon full to himself. Full with diapers, clothes and some books and toys. This was to be a 4 day, 3 night trip. At checkin we bought a $15 bag from the Southwest checkin agent for our baby’s carseat and stroller so that would all be together and protected from scuffs. The bag was gate checked and worked out OK.

Baby’s car seat and stroller tucked away in this bag for gate check

My biggest fear was really simply getting through security with the baby without it being a total disaster. Luckily we had PSA precheck on our boarding passes which made things MUCH easier!! We both had our laptops so I didnt have to dig those out of our backpack nor take our shoes and belt off. We had the baby’s car seat/stroller combo with us and the TSA agent was next to me helping me along. Milwaukee’s Mitchell International is usually a great airport to transit through. I put our carryon and backpack on the belt. Next I put the baby’s carrier upside down on the belt and finally folded down the stroller and it went on the belt. We walked right through with no line and it was perfect. My fears were relieved.

Our baby’s doctor recommended to nurse the baby on take off and landings to keep his ears from popping too hard. Once on board the baby was half asleep and eventually fell asleep on mommy’s lap. My wife did start to feed the baby on pushback from the gate and we were on a 100% full plane and seated in the middle seat.

Right after baby’s diaper explosion!

The 1.5 hour flight was pretty uneventful and boring since this plane was not wifi equipped. I read a magazine to pass the time. However about 20 minutes prior to landing while holding the baby my wife felt a lot of pressure and knew he was pushing out “something”!!! Of course our little guy didn’t have a bowel movement for the prior two days and decided to save it all up for his first flight!!!! My wife asked me to check him to see if I could see anything on his clothes. Sure enough I peeked at his out fit and noticed he pooped on his pant leg!!! Not only that it went THROUGH the snaps in his pants and on to my wife’s black pants!! OMG!!! Somehow it didn’t stink up the whole plane and we were able to discretely wipe it up with some disinfectant wipes we brought with us. Baby had to give us something to remember his first flight!!!

We waited for everyone to deplane and then my wife decided to change him quickly before leaving the airplane. The flight attendants were starting to get impatient with us as they claimed they wanted to start boarding for the next flight but we were literally only 2 or 3 minutes to get him cleaned up and changed. When we got to the jetway the baby’s large bag that we gate checked wasn’t there! Of course we were told it must have been taken with the rest of the luggage so we had to hold the baby all the way through the concourse and the air train to baggage claim where it didnt show up! We were told it was in the oversize luggage area and so we waited there for 20 minutes and it still didnt show up. However my wife noticed about six baggage carousels over a big blue bag and asked me to run down there and check it out. Sure enough, there was our bag on a random carousel 30 minutes later.

We picked up our rental car and made the 1.5 hours drive to the Ritz-Carlton Lake Oconee resort in which we were booked for the rest of the weekend. Overall the flying process with baby went OK. If our gate checked bag would’ve been where it was supposed to be it would’ve been a fairly uneventful flight aside from baby’s bathroom incident. 🙂 If you don’t have TSA precheck or Global entry access I would HIGHLY recommend obtaining it as it makes getting through the airport security a breeze!